I would say less "ordinary" than not yet lived in fully. Give those rooms a few years to take one some personal layering, revisit, and then see appraise. Ordinary is part of life. And not all interior designers are transcendent talents. Just as not every client wants something that screams chic. Sometimes comfortable ordinariness is all one truly requires. All that matters at the end of the day is that the homeowner is happy with the results and finds that the rooms acknowledges his/her lifestyle requirements. And there's a comfortable place to sit.

Wow, I must really be a sucker and and dud. I think the interior design is really really nice. I love the soft color combinations. And it looks like you can walk behind the sofa and access the french doors. Isn't the black and white fabric on the two chairs that flank the traditional table kind of cool and modern. And the rest of the composition -- a classic bust on the floor with casual throw pillows -- is interesting and inviting. I like it. Yeah, the designer may have been annoying and pushy on her last job (but just a little, really). She blew the budget, but she only went over with the quality sleep sofa that she got on sale. I don't think $5000 was a lot for the improvement that the couple got. I read interior design magazines all the time, but I still don't have the knack for mixing pieces that the designer has. Anyway, maybe I'm just a dufus.

Okay, I can understand the clients from the NY apartment pushing back, but seriously - why do you even hire a professional designer if all you want is a version of what you already have? By not letting a designer do their job, the clients shoot themselves in the foot and then say 'oh, it was okay but nothing great....we thought the experience would be different'.

The best projects are always the ones where the client realizes that they've hired a professional for a reason and *gasp* lets them do their job. If you have to consult with your client about every single fabric and accessory choice, not only is it a waste of time but it's huge waste of the knowledge base your designer has. If you want what you already have, at least be upfront and say so before you hire a big name designer, that way everyone is spared the disappointment at the end of the job.

I think it's time that ANON get a name, at least a screen name. If you want to play the omniscient god game, have the integrity to stand up to your name and make your pronouncements. Is there more than anonymous, hateful, scathing know it-all in blog world? Is this blog being cluster-bombed by people who are iconoclastic without ever being constructive? Whoever you are you anonymous bully, you are beginning to sound like a narcissistic, bombastic, insecure twit.

Dear Anonymous, You've been challenged by two of us ... show us pics of your presumably flawless rooms ... if they are as perfect as your comments about style and taste imply, you'd put us all in our places ... put up or shut up. :)

Dear Aesthete and Other Sensitive SoulsYour lack of tolerance to those having an opinion different to your own is rather telling.I reiterate: these interiors are ordinary (average, common, boring).This is not bitching, not moaning, not feeling superior. It is an opinion.My personal style leans towards Tarlow, Parlade and a dash of Maxime de la Falaise. Obviously the interiors discussed in this forum are far removed from my personal aesthetic.Relax and enjoy the banter.Anon.

Dear Aesthete,Rose Tarlow believed homes to be deeply personal - writing in The Private House: rooms “may be perfectly designed,yet if they fail to reflect the personalities of the people who live in them, the very essence of intimacy is missing, and this absence is disturbingly visible.” And that is exactly what is wrong with the spaces discussed here.Anon.

Dear Home Before Dark"Over and over again, I am drawn to these rooms filled to the brim with pattern, objects, a bit hodgepodge, like living in someone's whole life museum. Wonderful!." Your quote re HOBAC's Geoffrey Bennison post. Not even close to the rooms discussed here. Are you an inveterate blog flatterer? I do hope not.Anon.

Dear Anonymous whomever you are or are not: What I wrote on the HOBAC blog is true to me. An "inveterate blog flatterer," I am not. (And WTF about stalking my blog comments? Creepy. I can't, of course, fight back with equality because you, Anon, lack the balls to put a screen name on your comments.)

The room being discussed—or viscerally attacked—is not a room I would want to live in. What riles me are the Anons of the blogworld who are like terrorists: Hiding. Lurking. Hurling epithets and running undercover. Do you find integrity in that? I do hope not.

Isn't that the point of having a screen name? Having comments be traceable to an identifiable source? I thought you were for that.

"I can't, of course, fight back with equality because you, Anon, lack the balls to put a screen name on your comments."

How are you not fighting back "with equality"? What would make your response more "equal"? If you could cite other comments the person left? Wouldn't that be "stalking" his comments--you know, "creepy"?

Perhaps these rooms are exactly what the client ordered: youthful, uncluttered, imaginative and current. I like each item in each space. They are all things that could be used again and again in new contexts as the client may change, grow and add their own touches.Oh....and it is quite clear that AL is anything but "fragile".